26 Jul 2012

Our culture teaches us that the strength of our masculinity is directly connected to our sexual activity. It celebrates sexual conquest, mocking monogamy in marriage and chastity in singleness. We are told “real” men have sex multiple times a week, have had many sexual partners, use porn personally and to “spice up” their sex lives, etc. The culture is trying to tell us that these chains are a sign of strength. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sexual sin does not make us more of a man; it emasculates us! You need to know that your sexual sin makes you complicit in injustice, oppressing those who are weaker, those we are called, as men, to cover and protect. It profoundly impacts our view of others.

As a single man, it affects your ability to selflessly engage others. Rather than considering how to serve others and lay down your life, lust programs you to view others as a commodity, as objects that exist for your pleasure. Even if your sin is limited to fantasy and masturbation, you are training yourself in broken, selfish sexuality. Your experience of self-centered sex shapes your expectations for the marriage bed, radically undermining God’s design that spouses are to serve each other sexually, focused on the other’s pleasure, not their own. Should God provide a spouse, you will expect sex to be primarily about your pleasure.

For married men, it robs you of the ability to love your wife and children. You brought selfish expectations of sex into marriage and have taken matters into your own hands when it failed to satisfy. Because sexual sin is such a source of “life” for you, those you are called to love and cherish, shepherd and protect, become an annoyance. They are reduced to obstacles, keeping you from the pleasure you crave.

In the end, sexual sin sucks life and vitality from us. This is part of what is in view when 1 Corinthians 6:18 describes sexual sin as against our own bodies. Perhaps more than any other form of sin, it leaves us utterly drained spiritually. Far from demonstrating our power, sexual sin is a profound revelation of our weakness as we are enslaved to our behaviors and desires. As my colleague, Dan, says, “A real man can stare down his erection.” In other words, he is not a slave to his desires. A real man is stronger than his lust.

Further, in tragic irony, our pursuit of sexual sin ultimately robs us of our ability to experience sexual satisfaction. Ephesians 4:19 describes the reality this way: “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (NIV). The Greek word pleonexia literally means a “desire to have more.” It refers to utter insatiability. When we abandon ourselves to indulge in sexual pleasure outside of God’s design, the result is slavery. Like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, the harder we strive to experience sexual satisfaction, the more it eludes us—even as our reckless pursuit of sexual contentment takes us into ever-deeper perversions. Indulging “every kind of impurity” means that what once satisfied us does so no longer, and we need to go deeper into the mess to find the same thrill.

Jesus’ mission is to “set captives free” (Isaiah 61:1-3). He doesn’t want us to be emasculated, but to be men who are “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). The hope of the gospel is freedom from the things that enslave us, as his power works in us through his Spirit.

Do you believe that sexual sin is emasculating? How does the man you are in your fantasy life compare to the reality of your experience of slavery?

Updated 5.8.2017

17 Feb 2011

Here at Harvest USA, we facilitate Biblical Support Groups for people who struggle with sexual sins. One of our groups for male strugglers incorporates a study of Scripture with an eye toward our behavior. One recent question we focused on was this: What’s really going on in our sexual fantasies?

Are they harmless expressions we all engage in? If these fantasies are inside my own head and don’t affect anyone else, what’s the problem with them? As one guy in the group said, “Is it really anybody’s business what I’m thinking?”

These objections, at first glance, might appear to have some validity to them. But I challenged the men with some of these objections: What if my “private” fantasy includes having sex with your eight-year-old daughter? If you knew that was what I was thinking, you probably wouldn’t be too happy to hear I was teaching your daughter’s Sunday school class next week. Yet we still stick up for ourselves and plead “sanctuary” when it comes to our thought lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pleading a case to hear all that’s going on in that head of yours! But it’s also not a “no man’s land” either. Our thought lives are a reflection of what is going on in our hearts; our thought lives are a door to examining the desires that drive our emotions and behavior. Leave that door unopened to anyone else, and it can lead any one of us down some very dark paths. If we want to find freedom from the enslaving sexual desires that entrap us, then we must be willing to allow others to challenge us at the level of our thoughts and fantasies.

So, what’s going on in our sexual fantasies? I believe, if we’re honest with ourselves, that these secret fantasies represent a place where we find ourselves in control. We live in a world that is largely out of our control, one that frequently seems to be against us. Our fantasy lives are a desperate attempt to carve out a little spot in this world where something works out our way—finally! I know that’s a major issue in my life.

Many men, for example, will ask me if it’s okay to fantasize about their wives. I’ll ask if their wives are built different in their fantasies. But most would respond that it’s more about their wives doing things in their fantasies that they wouldn’t do in real life. Does this sound okay to you? Better still, ask your wife if it sounds okay to her.

Fantasy lives always intrude upon real life, somewhere, somehow. They aren’t harmless; they affect the way we think about or even relate to others in our lives. I know I need God to speak to that part of my heart with authority and grace. I know he does speak to that place. He does so through the words of his people, to those I’ve opened up my heart to, allowing them to challenge my illusions of self-importance.

So what’s going on in my sexual fantasies? A whole lot of me that needs replacing by a whole lot of submitting to the reality of what God is really doing in my life.

What about you? What do your fantasies reveal about your heart? What do you need to do with them?